An Immortal's Tale
by Dante de Troy
Summary: A budding immortal seeks to find the truth behind his own existence and to learn the secret of the man called Julian Thomas.
1. Introduction

To Whom It May Concern:  
  
My name is Dawson Parker, and I am immortal.  
  
Sounds kinda funny, doesn't it? Most immortals that I've heard of have some ringing name that they sound off with whenever someone tries to introduce them and especially when they're about to get into a fight. Somehow the name Dawson Parker doesn't exactly inspire fear in their hearts.  
  
I'm twenty six years old, though my body will always look about twenty three. To save you from doing even that simple math, that means I've been immortal for a little over three years now. Growing up, I always wanted to be something more than I was. I pored over books like the Odyssey and Illiad, Don Quixote, all the classics, always looking for something that would inspire me to be something great. Be careful what you wish for, right?  
  
I wish I had some fantastic story about how I came to be what I am today. I wish that I'd died in some magnificent battle or even having just barely survived some older immortal trying to take my head. Unfortunately, the real story isn't nearly that exciting. Not too long after stumbling out of the bar where my friends had been throwing my bachelor party, I had the misfortune to run across one of the more aggressive homeless who frequent the streets of Los Angeles at night. The alcohol having made me. less than the brightest bulb in the box, I didn't see any reason that this guy's knife should persuade me to cough up my wallet.  
  
So that was that. I bled to death in an alley about two blocks from all my best friends and woke up about twenty minutes later with one hell of a headache.  
  
Anyway, I know what you people are all about and, believe it or not, I happen to agree with it. Not necessarily the noninterference part, but the part about chronicling all the adventures of immortals seems like a good idea.  
  
Being the sort of guy I am, having grown up reading stories that can't even begin to compare to some of the things I've seen, I figured that I'd make sure that whatever record of my life is out there might as well be as complete and accurate as possible. All the more exciting that way.  
  
So here it is. Enjoy.  
  
Dawnson Parker 


	2. Chapter One

I guess I'd better start this at the beginning, that's typically the best place to start. There wasn't anything particularly amazing about my life before I died, nothing that really set me apart from anyone else. I worked for a small communications company doing a rather small communications job. Basically, I prank called people for a living. I performed one of those unglamorous little functions that are necessary to the style of life that the people of the world have become accustomed to. I tested phone lines by calling people up, making sure I could understand them, and hanging up again. Exciting, huh?  
  
Anyway, I met Jen when I was fifteen, during my sophomore year of high school. We stayed friends from then on, sometimes very good friends, sometimes more casual. She was always there for me in moments of need, though, and it was her that I turned to when my mother passed away, just a short ways through my junior year of college. From then on, the path seemed inevitable. First there were the night-long talks on the phone about the trauma that I had experienced, which turned into long talks about life in general and. well you get the picture. Not too long after graduation, we moved in together and about a year later we were engaged.  
  
Jen had always been glad that I kept up my relationships with the friends that I made throughout the years, first because it helped me get through the hard times after mom died, and then because it got me out of her hair every couple of nights or so. It was on one of those particular nights that I got what should have been my first clue to what I would become.  
  
I was twenty one years old when I met Julian Thomas.  
  
My usual crew and I were spending our Thursday night as we usually did, throwing back a couple of beers at our standard watering hole, the Mecca. I was on my fifth game of pool and acquiring my fourth Bud when I encountered Julian at the bar.  
  
"Pretty young, aren't you?" Was how he had begun our conversation.  
  
This strange man who was talking to me sent a peculiar sort of shiver up my spine, and set something in my head to tingling. He was not tall, but not short either. There was something about the way he held himself that made him seem bigger than his compact frame. He had broad, classical features and eyes that I didn't care to look at for more than a moment.  
  
"Twenty-one, if its any of your business, pal."  
  
He chuckled softly then and shook his head, almost wistfully.  
  
"Oh yes, very young indeed."  
  
"What exactly do you want?" I had asked him.  
  
"Nothing, really. Just to offer a little guidance, should you ever want it. And I think you will." He pulled a card from his pocket, then, and handed it to me. It had his name and a phone number printed on it.  
  
"You'll be in touch." He said, and then he walked away.  
  
What was I supposed to think? There went this strange guy who had given me probably the strangest two minutes of conversation I'd ever had, not to mention a serious case of the willies. I decided that the best solution was to make beer run number four include beers five and six and headed back to the table.  
  
When I told the story to Jen, she told me that I should just shake it off. He was probably just some guy trolling for an interested young guy to spend the evening with. When I suggested that maybe I should take him up on that offer, she tossed a pretty heavy book in my direction and laughed it off.  
  
Something about him though, still stuck in my head. I managed to put it out of mind for a few weeks, but the next time I met him, it became undeniable that there was something not quite ordinary about Julian Thomas.  
  
I'd spotted him nursing a glass of something brown at the Mecca on a Friday when I felt that same tingle run down my spine. At the exact same moment, Thomas' head shot up from his drink and he looked toward the door.  
  
Silhouetted against the light from outside was a lanky man who looked to be a little over six feet tall, and he was moving with the look of a man with a mission, directly toward Julian.  
  
I could hear them whispering, but couldn't quite tell about what, and then things got really interesting when Thomas said something to the man that caused him leap to his feet from the barstool he'd plopped down on.  
  
The whole bar could hear him when he started shouting.  
  
"I'll take that kind of thing from no man!"  
  
"Sit down, Darren. This is neither the place nor the time."  
  
"The time is whenever I want it to be, Julian. I'll not forget this. If it takes a hundred years, you'll live to regret this."  
  
"Keep on that path, Darren, and you won't."  
  
Julian had remained very calm and reserved through the whole exchange, but we could all hear the edge in his voice with the last comment, and this Darren could too. He tried for another second to stare down my acquaintance, then gave up with a snarl of disgust and stormed out the door.  
  
The bar breathed an almost audible sigh of relief and I went over to Julian, once more nursing his drink.  
  
"What was that all about?" I asked.  
  
"Mr. Parker, what a pleasant surprise. I wouldn't worry about that. Just an unpleasant disagreement with an old friend."  
  
"You two didn't sound very friendly, if you don't mind my saying so."  
  
"Old friends can be like that. But that's not all that's bothering you, is it, Mr. Parker?"  
  
The way he looked into my eyes with that keen, blue stare of his sent that chill down my spine again. This man wasn't hitting on me, that was for sure. The look he was giving me could more easily be described as that of a jungle cat sizing up another animal, trying to decide if it was prey or something to be ignored.  
  
"Just wanted to see if you were okay." I said, unsteadily.  
  
He laughed at that, that same soft laugh.  
  
"I appreciate your concern, Mr. Parker, truly. I assure you, I am fine."  
  
I shrugged my shoulders and went back to my game, my second encounter no more enlightening than the first. There was one thing that was different this time, though. I knew I'd see him again. 


	3. Chapter Two

Not too long after the encounter at Mecca, I went looking for Julian Thomas, only to find that suddenly the number on the phone no longer worked, and the address that it had formerly been attached to was now just a vacant warehouse. Some slightly illegal poking around revealed signs that someone had lived here recently. There were faded patches on the walls where pictures had hung, and a strange amount of scarring on a lot of the walls and floors, slashes, it seemed to me.  
  
Not finding much of interest, I tried to dismiss the whole thing, put it out of my head as nothing more than a flight of fancy, and went home to make love to my beautiful girlfriend. When I walked out the door, who should I find but the mystery man himself.  
  
"You're a curious one, aren't you Mr. Parker?"  
  
He was facing me, and I recognized his voice, but his face was hidden by the shadows.  
  
"Maybe I am. You leave a guy with a lot to be curious about."  
  
I could see a glint of light reflected off his pearly-white teeth as he smiled, ferally.  
  
"Careful, Parker, you might give me the wrong impression. I'd suggest that you leave well enough alone for the time being. You aren't yet ready for the things you might find."  
  
I'd had enough.  
  
"Okay, look, I've had enough." So, no one ever said I was the most creative guy on the face of the Earth. "This Batman, mystery man, whatever- man kinda shtick may go over great with the ladies, or the guys for that matter, I don't care, but I'm tired of getting jerked around by you. Unless you cough up some answers right now."  
  
"Duck!"  
  
"What?"  
  
"Duck!" He shouted again as he leapt almost clean over me, pushing me to my knees as something very shiny, very fast, and very mean looking went whizzing through the place where my head had resided a moment before. When I got up off my knees, Thomas was gone again, vanished into the gloom, leaving no trace.  
  
"Okay, now I'm really confused."  
  
Needless to say, I got the hell out of there as fast as these old sprinter's legs could carry me, and hightailed it home. Something in me told me that I shouldn't share the night's events with Jen, and while I felt guilty about keeping secrets from her, I knew that something big was going on here, and I didn't want to involve her in it until I knew more.  
  
As those thoughts ran through my head, I found myself marveling at the absurdity of it all. Here I was, the definition of a yuppie, a young guy living in the city paying the rent with a pretty standard desk job. Yeah, I was a yuppie all right. And what, I asked myself, do I think I'm doing going off and sneaking through dark alleys, talking with crazy men and getting sharp objects thrown at my head?  
  
Still, for all that, I could feel that whatever was going on, it was important, and the fact that Thomas had approached me before all of this started said to me that I was meant to be involved in some way. But first, I had to find him.  
  
The next morning was a Saturday, so I found my way to the library on the university campus. Having freshly matriculated, I knew my way around there better than I did any other library, though I did have to bribe the attendant at the door to let me in. Well, what's a six pack between friends, right?  
  
At first, I couldn't find much of anything. Thomas seemed to be almost invisible, except for some references to him in a couple economic journals. Apparently he held a controlling interest in a major conglomerate, but only rarely appeared and then only for very short periods of time. Unfortunately for me, this raised more questions than it answered. What was a business magnate with billions kicking around in his bank account doing slumming at a bar like the Mecca more than once and, more importantly, why was he interested in me?  
  
Thomas' company, Thames River Holdings, had no real information listed on its powerful owner, not even a picture. I found a couple of articles by business students at various universities who threw around wild speculations about Thomas, ranging from involvement in the international drug trade to the Illuminati, to vampirism, none of which seemed very likely to me. Although, given a bit more thought, he did have some pretty funky habits; wandering through dark alleys, disappearing into shadows. For all I knew he could be Vlad the Impaler himself, hanging around just to screw with my head. Possible, but not likely.  
  
After five hours, I was pretty exhausted and noticed when I walked outside that I had several missed calls from an unidentified number. When I checked the voicemail, I was only half surprised to hear the voice of Julian Thomas on the other end.  
  
"I must be brief. Meet me at the Ninth Street Bridge at six pm today, and don't be late. Be there if you want to live." And then he had hung up.  
  
This was getting a little too James Bond for my tastes, but the "if you want to live" comment had definitely got my attention. So, with more than a little anticipation, I decided that I would, indeed, meet Julian Thomas on the Ninth Street Bridge, and I sure hoped he kept his word. 


End file.
